


this drowning man

by erytheia



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Drinking, Getting Together, Introspection, Kissing, M/M, Minor Violence, cliches, just me pitying illumi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erytheia/pseuds/erytheia
Summary: "Illumi, are you-" Hisoka's head cants to the side, and Illumi watches the light catch on his face, the dips and curves and humanness of it all, "-upset?"
Relationships: Hisoka/Illumi Zoldyck
Comments: 31
Kudos: 392





	this drowning man

**Author's Note:**

> mom said it's my turn on the xbox, get out i'm playing soft but slightly melancholic hisoillu
> 
> title: drowning man by duran duran

Illumi wakes, and is met with pink.

He feels slow and syrupy in the low light, spilling in through the window, throwing shadows against skin all exposed. A clock flashes ‘1:52am’, and prints itself onto the back of his eyelids in blocky letters. The air outside looks thick, almost as though he could swim through it and out into anonymity, out of this particular bed and this particular body. He sees how long he can hold his breath, gulps in air when the numbers start to blur. Settles, for a moment.

The sheets around him are a deep, dark blue, like the sea, and suddenly he’s lost in it, floating away from the shore with his hair in his eyes. The alarm clock is too far away now, and Illumi doesn’t feel the time pass.

He falls into this limbo with ease, but then there’s a soft sigh next to him, a hand pushing the hair out of his eyes, unaware of the way it sticks to his skin. He looks at Hisoka next to him until his eyes start to burn.

His head is turned away towards the window, and Illumi watches the way his chest rises and then falls again, so easily as though Illumi is not here next to him, as though his hand isn’t all wrapped up in thick black hair. His own hair is splayed red against the sheets, curled as though bent by fingers. Illumi lets himself stare for another second and wonders why Hisoka has left his neck so exposed, and wonders where his needles are. He realises he doesn’t know, and settles again. 

The hand catches in his hair, and Illumi stills and waits for it to tug and to snap, to feel hot blood against his scalp and thick in his eyes.

The fingers thread through the knots thoughtlessly, something close to gentle, and then rest lightly upon his head. He shuts his eyes.

-

Illumi blinks once, then again, harder, and now he’s in the club, and the lights are flashing bright in his face. He had come for a drink, stayed for two, and now he’s stuck in the stool as though by glue – wonders, absently, if he could move if he tried.

He doesn’t try, and watches the clock spin into meaningless. 

He had felt that hollow feeling in his head again, the one that makes him want to tug at his hair until he bleeds, but keeps his arms hanging at his sides. He tries to understand what it is, settles on _off,_ on wrong, and stops. The weight is low in his stomach now, like he’s thrown himself from a ledge and is falling through wind. He doesn’t know how far is left, or if he cares. Smoke catches on his lips.

He is surrounded by strangers in a way that has never felt so foreign, before, as though he’s forgotten how to wade his way out through the crowd and back into usefulness. He can’t remember the last time he spoke to a person, truly, beyond yes and please and thank you, and maybe he’s lonely, but then again maybe he isn’t. He fiddles with a receipt between his fingers, hears the phantom crinkle of smooth paper. Then he tears it and watches it open up softly, the zeroes striking in two.

At some point he forgets the yes and the please and the thank you, but another drink is placed before him even in his absence. It looks like honey, tastes like metal, but Illumi sips at it regardless. He doesn’t know when he stopped feeling the burn in his throat, whether it was a few drinks ago or if it was before that, when he was small and new and blank. He feels blank now, too, he thinks, just without the youth. He does know that he’s not drunk, but his head has gone all light, airy and ready to burst. He wonders if the pop would make anyone jump, or if it would fade away under the heaving music.

Illumi doesn’t shift when he feels the crowd split, and a body settle next to him at the bar. He shuts his eyes briefly against the strobing lights.

“Hisoka.” He had wondered if his voice would tell, and croak with disuse. It doesn’t.

“Illumi.” A pause and a flash of teeth that Illumi can see even with his eyes shut. “It’s been a while.”

“Yes.”

And that’s it, isn’t it? Illumi can’t think of the words to say or how to open his eyes or how to think at all, stays stuck on this one off-note. He clenches his glass until it creaks. The alcohol feels heavy and hot in his stomach.

Hisoka looks down at the glass and the hand, and then back up. Illumi’s eyes open into the dark. Hisoka is squinting at him now, with that open confusion Illumi has never allowed himself, and Illumi lets him, reminds himself that he’s in control. Then Hisoka is frowning, and Illumi falls briefly off kilter because he doesn’t know _why_.

“Illumi, are you-” his head cants to the side, and Illumi watches the light catch on his face, the dips and curves and humanness of it all, “-upset?”

“No,” he says, and he means it. He downs the rest of his drink and ignores the shard of glass tearing its way down his throat, had already tasted the metal on his tongue long before this.

Hisoka smiles wryly, and Illumi feels that brief flash of unease he never feels anywhere else, just here, in this moment now shared. “Oh dear. You have no idea what you are, do you?”

Illumi rights himself at once. “Are you going to buy me a drink?”

Hisoka’s smile turns sharp, and Illumi hears a brief rush of waves. “Of course.”

-

Hisoka distracts him for a while, allows him to settle into the easy companionship like something happily brainless, a doll on strings. He had unstuck himself from the stool and broke through the crowd, Hisoka at his back, and now he sits again and loses himself in the stillness. The hours passed all at once, and then not at all, swallowing him up like sand until he’s slow with it, weighty in his chest and between his teeth. He sips at his drink to rid the dryness from his mouth, but it just settles, sour and damp on his tongue.

He scrunches his face up, feels the curls in his skin, and then a leg nudges his under the table of the booth. Hisoka is watching him again, hasn’t stopped, just sat head in hand as though he hasn’t a care in the world. Illumi hopes, so cruelly, only momentarily, that he does.

“Away with the fairies?”

“How did you know I was here?” Again, not a yes or a no, not something tangible that Hisoka can take from him, not something he would have to force himself to take back.

“I didn’t.” He’s quick, always, but Illumi stopped being impressed by Hisoka right around the time he realised he was human, too. Hisoka laughs at the look on his face, digs his chin further into his palm. Illumi absently watches the way the drink wetting his lips catches in the light. “I’m telling the truth. I am glad you’re here, though.”

Illumi takes a second to assess, another to breathe in the humidity of the room. “You’re always glad about something.” He means it as an insult, but maybe also as a question, and Hisoka eats up the attention greedily.

“Well, of course. What other way is there to be?”

Illumi thinks about this. Quiet, he lands on, simple, obedient, but doesn’t want to say any of them, doesn’t think Hisoka would like this answer. His lip curls slightly, and he wonders when he became aware of what Hisoka would like, when he allowed himself to care.

Instead he sighs and rests his chin in cupped hands. His voice fills with helium, light and flying up, up, up into the ceiling. “Maybe if you weren’t so happy all the time, you’d be less unbearable.”

He expects another laugh, maybe, but instead gets the creak of cheap leather, and Hisoka is closer now, voice hot and wet in his ear.

“Was that a joke, Illumi?” Hisoka drags his name out into a taunt, voice so low Illumi feels a little trill, a little break in the waves, and decides to chase it. He turns, sees Hisoka’s eyes so close that he forgets about the lights.

“I’m always joking.”

Now Hisoka does laugh, soft and private, and Illumi feels the huff of warmth against his lips.

“You are, aren’t you.” He says it like an epiphany, flattens the curiosity in the words somewhat, to keep Illumi’s needles at bay.

Illumi tips his head to the side, only for a second, just enough to make the world spin.

“Do you want me?” He has always valued simplicity, even more so as he watches the way Hisoka’s eyes glow until he can see nothing but gold.

Hisoka’s grin twists into something deadly, and Illumi feels a satisfaction low in his stomach, and now he’s back on the ledge.

“ _Yes.”_

-

The air is cooler than Illumi had expected when they leave the bar, legs like jelly and head up in the clouds somewhere. Hisoka is leading this time, all hazy confidence and smiles, and Illumi follows because he wants to. He hasn’t ever made that distinction before, feels a sudden rush at the newness of it.

Hisoka then turns not towards his hotel around the corner and to the left, but into an alleyway alongside the bar. Illumi inhales the smoke and wet concrete.

“What are you-” he asks, lightly, and then there’s a man in the darkness before them, and then there’s something resembling a man but not quite, his head in Hisoka’s hands and dripping, squelching, onto the black concrete. Illumi barely registers the blood when it splashes hot against his skin. Hisoka makes a sound deep in his throat, something like a moan and a little like that _yes,_ and then he’s grinning at Illumi and Illumi feels the world tilt.

“Your target.” He says, and Illumi feels distinctly put out.

“You looked at my phone.”

Hisoka hums, “and you didn’t,” and now he’s walking towards him. Illumi wonders if this is when normal people would step back.

Illumi sighs, high up on the back of his tongue, at the blood soaking into his shirt. “I liked this shirt.”

Hisoka laughs, all deep and dark, and then he’s on him, hands against Illumi’s cheeks, smearing blood into his skin and pressing still, deeper, until he feels bone. “I like it better now.”

Illumi has a needle out and against Hisoka’s throat in a heartbeat, hears him moan again, softer this time. He feels as though he’s vibrating, can barely hold himself back from tearing through that red flesh, down to the very core of him.

“I don’t care what you like.” Illumi whispers, and it’s only half true. Hisoka smiles, and Illumi jumps headfirst into the sea.

-

They don’t reach the hotel until the blood has dried and is beginning to tug at skin painted red.

They tear into each other once indoors, ripping at clothes and skin like they’re hungry, new blood splattered on the walls, wetting Illumi’s hair until its heavy and sticky. Illumi doesn’t remember the lift up to the floor, or the walk, or his day before it became this thing, alive where he is not. He can’t feel anything, anymore, other than the door at his back and Hisoka hot at his front.

He parts, for a moment, pants, “when did you book this room?”

Hisoka ducks to hide his smile against Illumi’s neck, spine straining against soft skin. “Ah, about the time I knew you’d be here.” Illumi wonders if this was when he first saw him or in that wavy time after, in the bar, when his blood started to thrum with potential failure.

He tugs at Hisoka’s hair once, then again and harder, strands trying to sift through his fingers like sand; they fail, too, and remain trapped in the sticky heat of his palm. “Oh.” He lets his head hang to the side, dropping his weight against the strings. Hisoka’s nails dig sharp into his lower back. “How very predictable of me.”

Hisoka nips at his throat, teeth this time, and Illumi feigns disinterest against the first real feeling he’s had all day, in weeks, since his absence. “I could always just leave.”

“Mm, you could,” Hisoka hums, and then he’s pressing back in against his lips and Illumi feels dizzy. They’ve done this before, over and over until Illumi became bored, and then after that, when he didn’t. It’s different this time, though, and Illumi knows it’s his fault for never learning the word _enough_. 

He’s falling back onto a sofa now, and Hisoka is on him all at once, heavy against his chest until he can barely breathe. Illumi tries to remember when they got through the door.

He licks the blood off Hisoka’s cheek just to keep the metal on his tongue, and Hisoka is saying _Illumi_ , and _god_ , and Illumi doesn’t think either are entirely present for this, wonders vaguely if they should be.

He returns himself to the room and stares up at the white of the ceiling. There’s that frustration again, and he shifts to rid himself of it: sideways, arches up, down, pressing so hard into the sofa that he can hear the springs creak and feel the sharp metal teasing against his back, through fabric.

“ _Hisoka_ -” he grits, and Hisoka’s hand tightens into an ache on his up, but he doesn’t split skin, doesn’t snap bone, isn’t fucking Illumi up so entirely that the lights start to fade.

“Breathe, Illumi.” Hisoka murmurs, and Illumi blinks.

He moves, fast, until blood is rushing in his ears and Hisoka is beneath him, forced onto the hard floor next to the sofa. Hisoka sighs, Illumi rolls his shoulders back, they sit. Hisoka looks up at Illumi, weight gone heavy on his hips, and loses himself briefly in the sheet of black and rust. He reaches up to tug at a strand twice, lightly, like a request.

“I could kill you right now,” Illumi says, and his voice croaks.

Hisoka’s grin is sloppy, but his eyes flash hard, soft, focussed. “And I could kill you.”

It’s true, Illumi realises, and now he doesn’t let himself breathe, eyes wide and seeing that impossible fucking red. He goes quiet, all docile, all at once, hands resting flat on Hisoka’s chest and soaking up the blood from his nails. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Hisoka says, a little like he’s been saying this all along, and maybe he has. Maybe he hasn’t, has been waiting until Illumi can say it for him, had gotten sick with patience.

Hisoka sits up and kisses him again, and Illumi shuts his eyes and settles into every corner of the room.

-

The clock blinks ‘2:10am’, and that hand is still on his head.

Illumi shifts onto his back to hold his own hand up in front of him, high over their heads until it starts to ache and tingle. He keeps it there as Hisoka shifts too, into wakefulness, and his voice slides low in the dark.

“Are you awake?” Illumi doesn’t answer that he hasn’t slept in days, decides to let Hisoka pretend. He lets his arm drop at last, and presses the cold skin to Hisoka’s chest just beneath the blankets. Hisoka hisses lightly, through teeth, but doesn’t pull away. “Never mind.” Ah, so no pretending, Illumi thinks, but then Hisoka is rolling to face him and his eyes are steady in the dark.

He shuffles down until his head is below the pillow, at an awkward angle with the bed, and he’s level with Illumi. Illumi looks not at the wall but back at him, now. He had almost forgotten the hand in his hair.

“You’re surprisingly honest tonight, Illu,” he says, quietly, just so. Curiosity tilts Illumi’s head slightly, digging his skull down into the sheets until the angle is all wrong, as though his neck is broken.

“I’ve barely said anything.”

“Yeah,” Hisoka smiles, and Illumi frowns.

“Ah.”

He looks down at his hand again, flexes it until the bones push up against his skin. “You still think I’m-” he tastes the word first, new and unpleasant on his tongue, so gloopy it almost sticks his mouth shut, “-upset.”

Hisoka doesn’t reply and instead just stares, and Illumi lets himself melt, boneless, into the sea of sheets.

He hums, careful and firm in his throat, eyes fluttering shut; revels, briefly, in the fragility. “It doesn’t matter if I am,” he says in that perfect monotone, ignoring the way his skin prickles, hair standing on end because he knows Hisoka is _seeing_.

“No,” nails dig against his scalp until he shivers, pull back, press heat into his skin, “it doesn’t.”

Hisoka is grinning again, all teasing edges, and Illumi reaches for his other hand, holds it in his own and feels the blood rush. He digs his thumb into Hisoka’s palm until the tendons strain, until blood vessels pop – watches, as Hisoka’s smile digs deeper into his cheeks.

“I don’t have anything to be sad about.” He flips a coin and decides on honesty before it lands. He wonders if he was convincing, and the metal clinks.

“And I don’t have anything to be happy about.” Hisoka says. Illumi isn’t looking at him now, but hears the words seep out from between a smile. 

He drops Hisoka’s hand – sighs, wearily, “I’ve been telling you that for years.”

Hisoka’s laugh is too loud, too sudden, in the low light in this high room, but Illumi doesn’t berate him for it. He wraps his tongue around its contours, wonders what they’d sound like from his own lips.

He chooses now to roll over and face away, eyes staring wide at the wall. Traffic throws amber light against the paint, then red, green, stretching the shadows out into neat lines. He picks up the coin and runs his fingers over the dents.

“Do you love me?” He feels the fingers in his hair curl slightly, lets his eyes fall shut against the shadows and the room and this one night.

Hisoka doesn’t answer, for a while. Illumi waits.

“You don’t want me to say yes.” He says it like a realisation, then half as a question, and Illumi spirals out into his want, explored now, for the first time in an age. Hisoka whispers ‘ _tell me what you want me to say’_ , and Illumi has always been good at requests.

He keeps his eyes shut, bends his voice into a whine, lamenting this truth he has always ignored but now can’t let go, when it’s hot and beating in his hands. “I think I want you to say yes.”

Hisoka laughs, and Illumi feels the room fill with helium. “Oh, poor Illumi. Then yes.” Illumi is on his back now, and Hisoka his hovering over him, eyes a horrible, lovely gold. “I do.”

“Good.” Illumi says shortly, and finds that he means it. Hisoka laughs, again again again, and it’s rough and harsh and immense, like rocks rolling at the bottom of the sea. Illumi breathes, and lets himself sink.

**Author's Note:**

> I personally think it's very unfortunate but also very funny that Illumi's only frame of reference for Real Human emotions happens to be Hisoka
> 
> thank you for reading!  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/lostchuu/)


End file.
